


your ancient name

by Sun_bee



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:46:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25784608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sun_bee/pseuds/Sun_bee
Summary: Nelle abandons her companions to give chase in the final hour. (SHB spoilers including 5.3, canon divergent)
Relationships: Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

Blood splattered on the glimmering stone of Mt. Gulg's peak. Gunpowder-smoke and motes of Innocence rose into the first beams of cresting dawn. Near ruined friends clutched their hurts and their loved ones. She was standing. She held the blade. She ran for the void-shimmer he carved in the air and gave chase, blinded. She leapt.

_You left them._

It wasn't dawn where she landed. A deep blue aurora danced overhead and across her palm that had just a moment ago seized an imperial coat with tangible certainty. The mountain was gone. The Exarch vanished. Fine leather boots waltzed into view and when she looked up Emet-Selch was a shape against the indigo-- sky?

"Well _you_ would, wouldn't you?" He scoffed. His gloved fingers rose and snapped out the light.

-

Elegant lines of arching gold framed her view when she woke. The expected trappings surrounded her, all the pieces of a scene that a rational mind might view and call a bedroom. She knew it was Emet-Selch that had placed her here, arranged this scene for her to witness and made sure she saw it not from the nest of sheets, finer than satin or silk, on the impossibly vast bed, but from the cold marble floor.

She took a breath. Measured herself. She looked for the pit of fear or uncertainty in her core and found nothing. She might be in her Ul'dahn bedroom, returning for the night. The blue light flowing in slivers through the gaps in the curtains; robes of some sort, too long for any shape of person she knew, draped over a chair; a vase cradling spider lilies in a shocking red hue she had never seen before. The theatre was impeccable, the scene set. Nothing could harm her in this place. Who would want to?

She wasn't _Nelle_ here.

Across the room perched on a lavish vanity, painted with golden birds and bright flowers weaving through sweeping structures of gold and grey, lay her weapons. She pressed her lips into a thin line as she went to it and lay a hand on the dented steel of her gunblade. It wouldn't last much longer, faults in the fine Doman metal beginning to show. Amongst all his meticulous orchestrations in this place, Emet-Selch hadn't even deigned it necessary to disarm her.

_As if you could hurt him. As if you would try._


	2. Chapter 2

Amaurot unfolded before her. 

There was no day or night in that place, only  _ brighter, darker _ . Did he make the moments last longer like he made the city, too? She could only mark the passage of time by wandering from empty landmark to empty street, searching. Around every newly risen corner she made herself imagine the Exarch. She abided in that delusional purpose until she saw the hundredth faceless spectre, heard the thousandth pleasant voice. It seemed Emet-Selch had been waiting for her resolve to shatter, and now he built gardens from its pieces. 

Reprieve from the glassy facade of the city came when she felt the scream bubbling in her throat. She stood in yet another Bureau, fists clenched, denied by every grey-robed figure beneath the ocean until footsteps behind her made Nelle turn. 

"I did not think he would give in," the towering shade spoke, their strange language a muddle to her ears but clear as a chime in her mind. 

Nelle span around. The half mask she peered up at was no different than the rest, but their voice was unclouded and sharp. They spoke  _ to _ her and her eyes widened. 

"He hasn't. He hasn't turned from his wretched course," she corrected them. 

"Wretched?" The grey hood tilted curiously. "Why would he remake you to say such a thing? Why in such a shape? He is a glutton for punishment, as you know, but this is an entirely new species of melancholy." 

She narrowed her eyes at the figure. Comprehending even this keen anomaly in Emet-Selch's diorama was like dragging her feet through molasses. "No, I don't know. Should I be saying other than cursing his name?" 

"Ah," they made a sound recognisable in any language, like realising a mistake. "Then you are not…" 

"I'm not what!" When the shade leaned down to peer at her, she recoiled under the scrutiny. Under the feeling of a smugness she could not see. "Who are you to tell me what I'm not?" 

"Oh, but you  _ are _ ." They straightened. Composed themselves. "Forgive me, I did not mean to alarm you. My name is Hythlodaeus." 


	3. Chapter 3

Her gunblade was abandoned in that strange suite she had begun to return to when her feet grew tired, and she found him at last. Bitter strides carried her without much thought to the rooftop of the same building. The city sprawled around it, the Capitol gleaming not two streets away and where Amaurot's avenues were dotted with foliage, there the roof was a terrace garden overflowing with lush flowers, greenery and flora of kinds she couldn't name, gleaming beneath the blue sea-sky. 

"And here I had begun to wonder if you might never elevate your thinking," he quipped. His hands were folded behind his back and he stooped beside precarious stems that held up someone's strange imagining of an orchid, clustered together and drooping under their own weight. "The little bird finally thought to fly up." 

She bit back her words, loathed to rise to whatever bait he had been concocting. Silence stung; it had been a very long time since anyone had called Ava a _little bird_. 

"Would it please you to know that the rest of your petulant assemblage are almost upon us? The Ondo set them scurrying about, but they've made good, as per usual." He tipped his chin up, turning away from her to stare out at the spires of the city. "Have at it, then. You've been so fond of questions, I see no reason for you not to bombard me again."

The cut of his hair might have been tidy once and she did vaguely recall portraits in Garlemald to that effect, but now it was tousled and rough. Questions were on the tip of her tongue. The urge to act was stronger and Nelle stepped towards him. 

She had to lift her hand a fair way to reach between furred coat and dark brown hair to the vulnerable nape of his neck. Emet-Selch's head bowed under the touch. His shoulders dropped and she knew that his eyes closed too. The motion was an instinct; not muscle memory. Something deeper. 

"What made you think I wouldn't understand?" She asked. Alone beneath the sea, what damage could the confession do now? He couldn't read her mind or see the future. She didn't know how to fight the desire to ease the furrow in his brow. 

Emet-Selch's head turned to peer down at her, his expression fixed. She cut him off. 

"I don't care if you think we're not real. You don't hold a monopoly on hating Hydaelyn. When we learned what happened, I didn't think you were wrong." 

He lied before-- he'd done more than watch-- but now he was true to his word. Emet-Selch watched her lips as she _scolded_ him.

Nelle spread her fingers, just bold enough to brush the tip of her thumb over his sharp cheekbone. "You came at a time I wanted to tear it all down. I would have helped you, if you had treated us better. I can imagine why you want to go back to this place, don't tell me I'm incapable of that." 

The wound was old and sore. How many times had she been told what she _wasn't?_ What she would never be?

"Imagine no longer." The timbre of his voice dropped low. The sneering pretense melted for the smallest of moments. "Look upon this city and know what it is you're denying--" 

"No," Nelle said. The bemusement on Emet-Selch's face made her chest tight. "Don't pretend that you built this place for our benefit." 

There was only one other instance, years ago when the sky was falling, that she could recall meeting a man's eye with unveiled intensity. There in the roof garden the Ascian stooped lower, lifting his hands to pull away one glove. He held his bare palm, pale like his face, half an inch from her cheek. Not afraid to touch her-- unwilling. 

"You don't know anything," he retorted, his voice low and close. His breath was warm. "You don't even know your name." 

"I don't know yours, either," Nelle told him, giving voice to the thread that began at her heart and ended tied around his fist, pulled taught. She would cut it soon, but not yet. She could pretend to not be real one last time. 

She kissed Emet-Selch. He wrapped his bare hand gently around her throat. Amaurot fell silent. 

_This is going to hurt._


	4. Chapter 4

_ Almost  _ was far enough away to make it count. They still hid behind plenty, but there was acceptance to the way Emet-Selch allowed her to push off his heavy Imperial coat that Nelle felt sure they had reached the end of this thread. This was all they would ever be. This was all she would ever know. She would never discover why Emet-Selch indulged her, and she didn't need to. She'd help to kill him all the same. 

She thought those things as her fingers stroked through his disheveled hair. She brushed the streak of white back from his forehead, slowly, again and again. She expected the strands to feel long with every touch, yet they stopped. Felt short. Seemed too dark to be right.

He still hunched as he lay his cheek to her breast and there was sweat on his skin. She doubted Ascians did much they didn't want. The body she held in her arms was real, but he had  _ allowed _ it to feel human beside her. Inside her. Tasting her like she was more than another grey-robed shade. 

There was a heartbeat beneath thin limbs and lean muscle. She hadn't dreamed that it beat faster when she bit her own hand to keep from crying out the name she didn't know. Her body remembered what she couldn't. Her soul knew to hold him when they were finished, and stoke his hair until he rose from their bed to meet another day. 

"The shade named Hythlodaeus," she began. Emet-Selch's eyes didn't open. For once, he stayed silent. She expected he would be unable to resist if she got something  _ wrong _ . "They thought that they knew me. They thought I was remade in someone's image." 

"You all are," he corrected her, subdued but cat-like. "Dust from the wreckage of something greater."

"You're right," she said flatly. Dryly. "But unless I'm mistook, all of us aren't here in your bed. And this is  _ your _ bed, isn't it?" 

A near imperceptible shiver ran across his pale back. For once he said nothing. She chased the flitting thought to its end.

"If you know me, then I beg you: don't tell me who I am." 

Emet-Selch lifted his head and her fingers fell to his jaw. His brow furrowed and his smile curled as he took in the sight of Nelle's imploring face. 

"That would surely be the deepest wound, would it not? Naught left to decide or discover. You'd always know this is just another mask." The smug observation made his eyes narrow. 

There was nowhere for her to turn away, naked and still wrapped around him. There was a time she might have lashed out against the man driving a cold needle into her chest. Now she was older. Now she was tired of it.

"What I know is that you couldn't hurt me with those words if you didn't mean something, once." She picked tenderness over retaliation. The choice made something in Emet-Selch's eyes change. Soften. 

His smirk remained, fixed in place, and he lowered his head back to her bare skin, laying down with her once more. 

"Nescience does not become you," he spoke against her skin.

"Humour me," she insisted. 


	5. Chapter 5

_ Were I to hazard a guess, I’d be almost entirely certain that she will try to kill me. Try, of course, being the operative word in any of these murine little malforms’ existences.  _

_ There’s a great deal of freedom in the predictable. She knows this. Exploits it. Reviles it. That at least she has in common with the flawless template from which she was scraped and reassembled. In learning the systems of whatever world, she can bend them to her will, Slip betwixt the bars of the cages they forge, and operate without regard for their restraints.  _

_ So why then does she insist on devolving yet further into one of  _ them _? If she’s to be believed then for a moment she very nearly came to her senses. Assisting me in our great work would absolutely have led to her destruction— though, perhaps that was the appeal? Useless.  _

_ As I watch her roam the halls of creation, trailing the digits of her disappointingly human hand over desks and tools and weaving her way between the shades of the Akadaemia, she almost seems to grasp the magnitude of what she’s putting her sticky fingers all over. But she is a creature of almosts. Almost a Sharlayan. Almost a saviour. Almost a friend. Almost, almost, almost. Decide, woman, or put yourself out of your misery! _

_ When she looks to me, glancing from the corner of her dark eye before her limited vision can truly focus, she almost sees me. She almost smiles.  _

_ When she pretends that she is in control, her hands on this body’s chest, taking her pleasure from it and not minding that I am taking back, she is almost…  _

_ It is a waste of my time. When I rest my head on her skin and listen I hear nothing akin to comfort. All the pieces are there and I do not know why but they are not shattered. Only changed. Made into something new, and I do not know how to put them back.  _

_ There was no speck of her that washed ashore on the First. This form may be all there is. She never plucked a star from the sky to call her own. I cannot wake her. She is almost right and never will be. _

“They’ve made it at last, though they did drag their feet. Do you think they will enjoy Amaurot as much as you?”  _ I wave my hand at the vista and ask her as we watch the lights of a distant tower in the Macarenses Angle light up with the heroes’ arrival.  _

_ Kore stayed. Estinelle seizes me by the jaw with all her strength and smothers my laugh with a kiss before she goes. I am reminded of the last gesture of affection I received in Amaurot. We were betrayed, without recourse, and we could only watch as the curtains of our grand stage came crashing down atop the players.  _

_ A kiss is a different thing in these forms. Her breath is ragged. She meets my eye for far too long. She shudders when I release her. _

_ She goes to rejoin our friends. Scholar and popularis and seer and knight. This will all be over soon and none of them are whole enough to stand, let alone remember what it is they have lost. Perhaps I will remind them before they are squashed out of this pitiful mimicry of a life. They should know why success is beyond them.  _

_ I do so hate to be proven wrong.  _

_ Come to think of it, it’s a terrible bore to be proven  _ right _.  _

_ A good architect always plans for both.  _

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

A shimmering white stone lay buried beneath papers, sketches, concepts and notions. Flowers and wings surrounded it. Half formed and ancient, it fluttered.

_ Hades.  _

_ My love.  _

_ Try to remember, almost everything must change. _

  
  



End file.
